For thousands of years, humans have shared information through stories. We’ve been doing it since before the written word existed. And no matter how much technology changes, we’ll still tell stories — it’s just the medium that will change.

Companies know this, and the smartest companies use storytelling to reach the right audience. There’s a role for storytelling within cybersecurity marketing, too. Cybersecurity brand storytelling enables cybersecurity companies to communicate their message and value with the right people for greater longevity and business success.

Brand Storytelling 101

Semrush defines brand storytelling as “The process of creating a series of plot points to build an emotional connection between a brand and its target audience.”

Forget about the word “brand” for a moment and focus on “storytelling.” Think about the last great story you consumed. You loved it because you had an emotional connection to that story, right?

Now we can go back to “brand.” Take a moment to think about your favorite brand. Whichever brand that is, it’s your favorite because of that emotional connection. You’ve developed that emotional connection because, yes, the product is great, but you also feel connected to the story the brand tells.

Brand Storytelling and Cybersecurity

How can you incorporate brand storytelling into cybersecurity marketing? On the face, it would seem difficult. After all, how do you make an emotional connection with a cybersecurity company?

Some companies make the emotional connection through fear. They scare potential audiences into thinking that they need the cybersecurity solution because if they don’t invest in it, their companies are at risk of an attack.

Fear is the wrong approach to take, though. Ask yourself this: do you want your brand to be associated with fear and its cronies, uncertainty, and doubt? Do those emotions fit in with your brand’s values or your services?

Your audience should choose you not because you frightened them. They should feel confident that you’ll help them solve their problem.

Why Brand Storytelling Matters in Cybersecurity

When you incorporate brand storytelling into your cybersecurity content marketing strategy, you’re doing three things:

• Building trust.
• Humanizing your brand.
• Differentiating your company.

Building Trust

As we’ve established, brand storytelling is not about scaring the customer into buying your services or solution. It’s an opportunity to build trust. It gives you the opportunity to educate your audience about the risks they face and how to protect themselves. They feel like they can trust you because you’re an authority that wants to help them.

Humanizing Your Brand

Another benefit to brand storytelling in cybersecurity is that it makes your brand more human. You’re telling your story, which allows you to showcase the people behind your brand. By sharing interviews with subject matter experts, guest posts written by them, podcasts featuring them, or videos of them talking about cybersecurity, you prove you’re not a nameless, faceless corporation. There are real people at your company, and they want to help your audience.

Differentiating Your Company

Additionally, using brand storytelling sets your company apart. Many other cybersecurity companies aren’t using brand storytelling, so when you do it, you show your audience you’re not like the other guys, and you don’t want to scare them. Instead, you want to educate and build trust.

Getting Started with Brand Storytelling in Cybersecurity

How do you incorporate brand storytelling into your cybersecurity marketing plan?

• Determine what your story is.
• Decide who your audience is.
• Consider what kind of content works best and when.

Determine What Your Story Is

The first step is figuring out what your story is. It’s tempting to simplify your story and say, “We protect you from the bad guys.” However, that’s what everyone else is saying. You have to say something different to attract the attention of a cybersecurity audience.

Your audience wants to know how you’re going to make their jobs easier, how you’ll save them money, and how you’ll allow them to focus on their core business. How are you going to make them the hero? Those are the things your story needs to tell.

In the best stories, there’s a hero (or anti-hero) at the center of the tale. In this case, the customer is the hero of the story, not your company. You’re helping the customer accomplish certain goals, and you want that to be clear in your brand’s storytelling.

Decide Who Your Audience Is

Your brand’s story isn’t going to resonate with everyone. Nor should it. You’re not selling your solution to everyone — you’re selling to specific groups.

That’s why it’s critical to develop content marketing personas. A content marketing persona is a sketch of your target market based on data you’ve validated. It’s based on customer research, not on assumptions. Moreover, the market changes and the personas you target might change as well.

How do you create accurate personas for content marketing purposes? It starts with understanding your customer’s buying journey and their role in the buying decision. You also need to look at their needs, interests, and preferences.

Your sales and customer support teams can be an excellent resource for this process. They interact with potential and current customers all the time. As a result, these teams have deep insights into what messages will work best.

Social listening tools also give you insights into your audience and their buying journey. They’re sharing how they feel on social media. Social listening tools analyze that data to give you a better sense of your target personas’ emotions and actions during the purchase process.

Consider What Kind of Content Works Best and When

Let’s say you’ve got your messaging down pat, and you know exactly who your target personas are. The next question to ask yourself is what kind of content works best and when you should serve it up in the buying journey.

The traditional marketing funnel has four stages:

• Awareness.
• Interest.
• Desire.
• Action.

There are specific types of content for each stage of the marketing funnel. In the awareness stage, the traditional content has been blog posts, articles, videos, social media content, and infographics. Moving onto the next stage, interest, the traditional marketing funnel would serve up blog posts and articles, but also demo videos, product webinars, and landing pages. In the desire and action stages, the traditional marketing funnel would also feature demos in addition to trials, comparison pages, case studies, testimonials, reviews, and proposals or cost estimates.

However, the traditional marketing funnel doesn’t completely match today’s purchasing journey. It’s become increasingly clear that the purchasing journey isn’t linear. If someone is visiting your website, it doesn’t mean they’re familiar with your brand. And even if they’re familiar with your brand, they might not be ready to take the next steps.

Instead of offering specific types of content at set points along a linear journey, it’s better to create a mix of educational content and thought leadership (to establish yourself as a trusted advisor). You should be serving up this content in a way that’s engaging and interactive, including podcasts, videos, and flipbooks.

Connect Deeply to Your Audience with Brand Storytelling

Your audience wants to do business with someone they like, know, and trust. Brand storytelling helps you do that. By using brand storytelling techniques in your marketing, you share helpful information to build trust with your audience. With the right content at the right time, you can guide your audience to a buying decision they’ll be happy they made.